Andrew B. Dickson's blog

Entrepreneurs often don't have the ideal office sitution, so you will often find them wherever wifi and beverages can be had.

Here's the top in KC. The Roasterie is the best IMHO, and is where you will find StartPathers.  The Roasterie is owned by Danny and Carla O'Neil, hotshots of the coffee world and fellow entrepreneurs.

 
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The Roasterie The is the default location, best seating, great coffee, and it is owned by a fellow entrepreneurs, Carla and Danny O'Neil 6223 Brookside Blvd Kansas City, MO 64113

Filling Station 2980 McGee Trafficway Kansas City, MO 64108

J P Wine and Coffee Bar 1526 Walnut St Coffee Girls 310 Southwest Blvd, Kansas City, MO 64108

Da Bronx Better than a coffee shop, great subs and pizza teamed with wifi makes for great working conditions, Bring headphones, its a bit rowdy. 3904 Bell St Kansas City, MO 64111

Coming from design school, I am intimately familiar with late nights and long hours. Not being a coffee drinker, I resorted to diet coke and cold air. However, I did discover that caffine only powers you for an hour or so. Caffine also aggrivates ADD, making that hour less than effective.

My new weapon of choice.

Three of these a day, and you'll manage a decent days work. I am currently under the inffluence and have hammered out a weeks worth of back emails, some blogging, a bit of Bplanning, prep for the week, laundry, bills, and have a couple hours left.

What's your Fuel?

This is an extremely handy solution for those that need lots of whiteboard luv. This will be done in the coming weeks, and will be a killer tool for the StartPath offices.

Great for product design and group creative sessions in addition to more effective presentations.

Here are the tutorials

I think I am throwing in the hat on PC's and Microsoft. Windows XP has a nasty new behavior of automatically installing and REBOOTING of your computer.

On top of that, the screen on my HP laptop is freaking out and will be dead in days. The build quality is crap, the battery lasts for an hour and a half, if lucky, and using the touchpad causes crashes.

ENOUGH!!

These types of issues are killers for startups and entrepreneurs. No IT departments, no money, no time, and no room for B.S. Windows freaking out before a presentation or right before a launch could be a major setback.

The new year will bring a switch to Mac, and that may not be soon enough. I look forward to stability, no mal or spyware, performance, and something built to last for more than a year.

In the meantime, I can get some laughs from all of the Mac ad's. Check out some of the U.K. ads as well.

“Before you even start addressing the hard stuff, never ask a venture capitalist to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). They never do. This is because at any given moment, they are looking at three or four similar deals. They're not about to create legal issues because they sign a NDA and then fund another, similar company--thereby making the paranoid entrepreneur believe the venture capitalist stole his idea. If you even ask them to sign one, you might as well tattoo "I'm clueless!" on your forehead.”

Feld Thoughts

By Joel Spolsky, from "Joel on Software"

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Here are a few tips for running a beta test of a software product intended for large audiences -- what I call "shrinkwrap".
These apply for commercial or open source projects; I don't care
whether you get paid in cash, eyeballs, or peer recognition, but I'm
focused on products for lots of users, not internal IT projects.

Too many companies treat their customers like crap. It’s frustrating and inexcusable. You don’t like being treated like crap, right?

So why treat your customers that way?

1. Withhold information.....
2. Use high-pressure sales tactics.....
3. Rope-a-Dope marketing....
4. Overcharging....
5. Overwhelm people with options.....
6. Make it hard for people to buy.....
7. Assume the sale is done.....

Your elevator pitch is the only thing that may people will hear about your business. Make it count, and more importantly, make it understandable. Your elevator pitch is how many people and potential customers will first grasp your business. Skip the jargon, keep it simple, and most importantly, how does it matter to the person in front of you. It sounds simple, but many companies have pitches that are incomprehensible. Check out this example and then jump to the article.

From Inc July '07 issue.

DAVE I'd like to begin by pumping you guys up a little bit. What we're going to do first is show you the worst elevator speech ever. It
was caught on national TV.

[Everyone in the room chuckles. ANDY points his remote control at the computer.]

[CUT TO: Screen in front of the room, where 60 Minutes correspondent
BOB SIMON stands, head cocked skeptically, next to a young guy with a dark suit and spiky hair. It is JEFF DACHIS, who then owned an
e-business consultancy called Razorfish.]